Haley Joel Osment on Shyamalan

We will never forget the powerful performance of Haley Joel Osment in Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense. As long as cinema is alive, Shymalan’s ghost drama will be cherished, and mainly the film will be recognized as one of the best thrillers of all time. What makes Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense special, besides its plot and direction, are the performances.

The Academy Award nominated actor recently sat with A.V. Club to discuss his new film, Tusk, directed by Kevin Smith and being a child star. – Osment also talked about his former bosses M.Night Shymalan and Steven Spielberg; “he calls me from time to time – Spielberg does it, too,” says Osment.

On Shyamaln:

“Night’s been kind over the years. I think that people aren’t as happy with his recent work. It wasn’t his first movie, but when your first big thing is a script that is that good, and when we were shooting, I think everyone was aware that as long as we don’t get in the way of this script, it’s going to be great. It’s tough to please people after that. I think that he’s such a good director, aside from the writing, that he could have a much bigger range than thrillers. I think he’ll eventually do that. Unbreakable is just shot really, really well. He has a very interesting visual style that could work in films that aren’t necessarily horror.”

“What was awesome about that movie, and it seems like a thing of the past, is that we got three weeks of rehearsal. Just Bruce, Toni Collette, Olivia Williams not feeling under the gun. We’d sit in the hotel conference room running through the scenes and talking through them. We did a table read with the whole cast, and with most movies I do, everybody just shows up and starts shooting immediately. To his, and most of the other director’s that I’ve worked with, credit, there are times when tricking a kid into a performance works. Like Kubrick did with Danny Lloyd, where he didn’t know it was a horror movie, and you withhold things from children.”

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